Monday, June 18, 2012

One Shocking Truth About Campaign Money -- It's Not Shocking

There’s a perception in the world at large that
politicians are allowed to use their personal left-over campaign funds for
anything – fancy houses, nice cars, their kids’ college education, a pony –
whatever they want. In fact, they can’t. Under federal law, when an incumbent loses
any remaining campaign money cannot be used for personal expenses. It must be donated to the campaigns of other lawmakers,
to political parties or to charities.

That’s why I found a new report from the Citizens for
Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) called “No
Strings Attached” to be both a
useful overview of what happens with left-over campaign funds while at the same
time maybe not as shocking a message to those outside the beltway as one might
think. CREW found that members of
Congress who become lobbyists spend more of their left-over money on political
contributions than those former members of Congress who went into other
professions.

OK, so, yeah. On the negative side this does leave the
impression that legislators are “buying off” those they want to influence. Or
on the positive side one could interpret it as an investment in getting people elected
who are most likely to agree with the newly minted lobbyist’s views. They are,
after all, in the persuasion profession. It’s a lot easier to persuade someone
who sees the world as you do than otherwise.

In short, the authors suggest that the shockingly negative
news of the report was that those former lawmakers who move into the lobbying
profession shift whatever was left from their campaigns to the political
coffers of others. In my opinion there’s
a shockingly positive spin as well – members of Congress aren’t allowed to buy
ponies with their excess campaign funds.
And this is really where the American populace is in terms of their
views of our political system. Now that’s
truly shocking.